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Joy
1st Place Poetry Contest Winner
Jessin
Caster
Joy
has skin
like them coffee beans
in the woven basket at her dusty bare feet;
ankles in chains like metal snakes.
She lifts her face to sky
and the sun rises up gold in her eyes.
She snaps
once;
two pairs of ebony fingers press calloused and dirty together
and slip
in synchrony:
snap.
She turns slow,
slow in the rhythm of things,
water slow, graceful –
down toward her dusty bare feet and finds
her shackles have bloomed into daisy chains,
and in the woven basket there is a pair of red shoes.
She bends down slow and graceful, laces up right,
feelin’ the laces like silk between them fingers that
when she rises up slow and graceful
snap.
Then she smiles
slow,
and from deep in her black belly
where six long-legged children were made, rises a low hum,
rich and deep
like them coffee beans.
Joy spreads her arms, and her fingers are the rays of the
sun,
snap;
and her hummin’ is the sound the earth made
as it was bein’ born out of the nothingness,
“mmm...” snap;
and when she opens her mouth to sing full
she pours out honey shinin’ gold.
She dances,
arms out, snap,
chest open, snap –
red shoes and daisy chains
a-flyin’ with the uncaged birds.
All
I Have Left Are Flying Monkeys
2nd Place Poetry Contest Winner
Larry
S. Lafferty
On
the same day that a North Carolina xmas tree
Delivered itself to the White House, the supreme court
Started throwing itself to the ground.
Authority, Liberty and Order got together,
In private session, and agreed that Authority should die ?First.
Falling, she shattered with unflinching gravity,
Among the blue people, in her chosen spot on the yellow
Brick road to the emerald city.
They
police-roped the area, cleaned it up,
Chased the blue people away,
But not before Authority got word to the trees
That falling was a sacred right,
The justice of liberty holds sway in these parts,
Only the natural order has these rights.
That tree was 181/2 feet tall Not a long way to fall,
Not far, not hard at all. It got the word,
But remained unconvinced until it found out
How to spell c-h-i-p-p-e-r.
The message was delivered by Flying Monkeys
Who weighed their marbles on Justice’s scales,
Balanced against the authoritative weight of falling trees.
One
Bad Street Name
3rd Place Poetry Contest Winner
Joe
Aimone
They
call him “Froot Loop.”
He’s not that different from the others,
These eighteen year old men who grew up
In harder places than the ones
I ever had the privilege
To hate being stuck in. Now
It is a custom for these men
To have their special names to go by–
They are the burrs of language, stuck
Somehow to us when we weren’t looking.
One’s “T” because of the suggestion
That he might have some “tea”
Or because “Taquarius,”
The name his mama’s proud of,
Is just a little overblown–
Then there’s “Blunt.”
Same story: The hint of something,
But he likes to say it’s just a good description
Of how he is, the way he tells
The facts. But then there’s Froot Loop.
I don’t know the occasion, place
Or reason why they call him Froot Loop.
It doesn’t matter much: you see
How that name disconnects him from them,
>From being in the situation.
He is a walking exile here,
And these guys are already exiles twice over:
They got sent away to college,
And college is sending them away
One by one, because they don’t know how
To be in college.
He doesn’t like to have it told
That that’s the name they call him by.
I am his teacher,
The only champion he has
Between his eighteen years
And the class system’s
Jaws, just waiting to snap shut
And swallow him back into the streets.
Can you imagine what a motherfucker
He is going to have to be, with that name?
I try to put myself in his position.
I tell him how they called me “Frog Eyes”
When I got my glasses, after I got hit
Too many times by baseballs, walls
And other parts of my flat world.
It doesn’t work. He can’t imagine my life.
And I couldn’t imagine his
If I wasn’t in it this way.
Truth is, the guy who first called him that,
That man should find out what it’s like
To have his mouth filled up with dirt.
I’d like to put it there myself.
Black
White
Poetry Contest Honorable Mention
Danielle
Blasko
I
watch the painted people interact
and voyeurism engulfs me, I wonder
at the goal
of an individual
in the battle of races, a choice
to overcome
or to divide like the current state
of freedom. Despite Democracy
religion and government are one,
ignorant of division, where
it exists
and where it is needed.
Poetry doesn’t equate to a walk
Or rightfully created slang,
and prejudice is not limited to standard
English contrary
to segregated thought
We all have roots in Africa.
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